l that are
valuable, already appropriated as private property. How then are we to
make anything out of these lands with this encumbrance on them? or how
remove the encumbrance? I suppose no one would say we should kill the
people, or drive them out, or make slaves of them, or confiscate their
property. How, then, can we make much out of this part of the territory?
If the prosecution of the war has in expenses already equalled the better
half of the country, how long its future prosecution will be in equalling
the less valuable half is not a speculative, but a practical, question,
pressing closely upon us. And yet it is a question which the President
seems never to have thought of. As to the mode of terminating the war and
securing peace, the President is equally wandering and indefinite. First,
it is to be done by a more vigorous prosecution of the war in the vital
parts of the enemy's country; and after apparently talking himself tired
on this point, the President drops down into a half-despairing tone,
and tells us that "with a people distracted and divided by contending
factions, and a government subject to constant changes by successive
revolutions, the continued success of our arms may fail to secure a
satisfactory peace." Then he suggests the propriety of wheedling the
Mexican people to desert the counsels of their own leaders, and, trusting
in our protestations, to set up a government from which we can secure
a satisfactory peace; telling us that "this may become the only mode of
obtaining such a peace." But soon he falls into doubt of this too; and
then drops back on to the already half-abandoned ground of "more vigorous
prosecution." All this shows that the President is in nowise satisfied
with his own positions. First he takes up one, and in attempting to argue
us into it he argues himself out of it, then seizes another and goes
through the same process, and then, confused at being able to think of
nothing new, he snatches up the old one again, which he has some time
before cast off. His mind, taxed beyond its power, is running hither and
thither, like some tortured creature on a burning surface, finding no
position on which it can settle down and be at ease.

Again, it is a singular omission in this message that it nowhere intimates
when the President expects the war to terminate. At its beginning, General
Scott was by this same President driven into disfavor if not disgrace, for
intimating that peace could no